CELLS Seminar: ‘Constitutional Balance in the EU after the Euro Crisis’, Professor Mark Dawson (Hertie School of Governance, Berlin)

This talk, and the paper on which it is based, will explore how the European Union's response to the euro-crisis has altered the constitutional balance upon which its stability is based.

Seminar Abstract:

The paper argues that the stability and legitimacy of any political system requires the structural incorporation of individual and political self- determination. In the context of the EU, this requirement is met through the idea of constitutional balance: a balance which carries 'substantive', 'institutional' and 'spatial' dimensions. Analysing reforms to EU law and to the EU's institutional structure in the wake of the crisis - such as the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism, the growing influence of the European Council and the creation of a stand-alone Fiscal Compact - it is argued that recent reforms are likely to have a lasting impact on the ability of the EU to mediate conflicting interests in all three areas. By undermining its constitutional balance, the response to the crisis could endanger the long-term stability of the EU project. The lecture will conclude by exploring the feasibility and desirability of recent EU reform proposals from a constitutional perspective.

Professor Mark Dawson (Speaker)

Mark Dawson is a Professor of European Law and Governance at the Hertie School of Governance. His research focuses on the relationship in the EU between law and policy-making – he recently published a book on ‘New Governance and the Transformation of European Law’ (Cambridge University Press, 2011).

Mark holds degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh and Aberdeen as well as a PhD from the European University Institute in Florence. He has been a visiting scholar at the Institute for Global Legal Studies of the University of Wisconsin and a Visiting Fellow at the Harvard Kennedy School. Before joining the Hertie School, Mark Dawson taught at Maastricht University; he remains a scholar within the Maastricht Centre for European Law.